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Editorials Make the Case for Improving Direct-Care Jobs
April 26, 2006
A spate of recent editorials in newspapers and on websites have made the case for improving direct-care jobs.
An April 5 editorial by Representative Paul Casey in Massachusetts' Stoneham Sun notes that the state's personal care and home care services ''are having a hard time attracting and retaining enough employees to maintain quality services,'' in part because pay rates are so low that many are eligible for ''state-sponsored day care, housing, transportation, MassHealth and food stamps.'' Casey also lauded last year's 75-cent-an-hour increase to homemakers, which ''finally helped boost their average wages to just over $10 an hour,'' and a new state Direct Care Worker Scholarship Program, which provides free training and state testing to individuals looking to begin a career in long-term care.
An opinion piece cowritten by Di Findley and others from the Iowa Better Jobs Better Care coalition lays out the reasons why a stable direct-care workforce matters, why turnover is high, and what can be done about it. While the March 29 essay, which appeared in the Des Moines Register, is primarily pitched as a plug for BJBC-Iowa's work, it ends with a rousing call to action that applies to everyone. ''The time is now,'' the authors write, ''to highlight direct-care worker issues in discussions and decisions about long-term care policy and practice. The quality of your care will depend on it.''
In a March 31 article on the Center for American Progress website, Lisa Eckenwiler notes the ''heartening'' news that the current generation of older Americans is the healthiest only to add that we're still facing ''what some describe as a 'care gap' and others call a 'care crisis.''' We ought, she says, to be thinking of ways to encourage people to enter and remain in the elder-care field, through strategies such as equitable pay, worker safety, career advancement opportunities, and ''access to quality, affordable health care for all people.''
On The Empire Page, a website devoted to politics and government in New York State, Joe Rossi of SEIU Local 200 United describes a turnover crisis among direct-care workers who work with children with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. That crisis, he says, is caused by poor wages and benefits. ''Simply, after a long day of working with handicapped children and adults, direct care staff in these agencies go home with a sub-par paycheck that doesn?t cover the increasing energy bill, let alone groceries and transportation.'' The solution, says Rossi, is to ''pay a fair wage and provide quality benefits to recruit workers to this profession while also providing training in order to retain them.'' He cites a program in New York where turnover dropped from 40 to 10 percent after workers received wage and benefit increases and training to further their careers
And in a guest editorial in the April 2 Lansing State Journal in Michigan, Richard Sullivan, the father of a man who was disabled 21 years ago, calls for better wages and benefits for the people who help care for his son. ''[S]omething is wrong with our system,'' he writes, ''when a person who takes care of those in need - by doing everything from bathing them to feeding them to helping them get their prescriptions - makes [minimum wage]?. Not only do these workers earn the minimum, they also don't receive health insurance or any real benefits to speak of,'' he adds. ''The result is that the people who provide this service - about 44,000 in Michigan - often leave the job in pursuit of one with higher pay and benefits.''
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Specialist
Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute
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